Part 18

But those who thought of active pleasure were few indeed. Theirs was killing work, the most severe kind, and performed under the broiling sun, that at high mountain altitudes sends the mercury above 100 on every summer's day, and makes itself felt as if the rarefied atmosphere was no atmosphere at all. After a long day at the drill or the pick or shovel in such a climate, it was only natural that the men should, with a common impulse, seek first the solace of their pipes, and then of the shake-downs in their tents. I did not know until the next morning how severely their systems were strained; but it happened at sunrise on that day that I was at my ablutions on the edge of the river when Dan Dunn's gong turned the silent forest into a bedlam. It was called the seven-o'clock alarum, and was rung two hours earlier than that hour, so that the men might take two hours after dinner out of the heat of the day, "else the sun would kill them," Dunn said. This was apparently his device, and he kept up the transparent deception by having every clock and watch in the camp set two hours out of time.

With the sounding of the gong the men began to appear outside the little tents in which they slept in couples. They came stumbling down the bluff to wash in the river, and of all the pitiful sights I ever saw, they presented one of the worst; of all the straining and racking and exhaustion that ever hard labor gave to men, they exhibited the utmost. They were but half awakened, and they moved so painfully and stiffly that I imagined I could hear their bones creak. I have seen spavined work-horses turned out to die that moved precisely as these men did. It was shocking to see them hobble over the rough ground; it was pitiful to watch them as they attempted to straighten their stiffened bodies after they had been bent double over the water. They gained erectness by slow jolts, as if their joints were of iron that had rusted. Of course they soon regained whatever elasticity nature had left them, and were themselves for the day--an active, muscular force of men. But that early morning sight of them was not such a spectacle as a right-minded man enjoys seeing his fellows take part in.

THE END

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Campaigning with Crook, and Stories of Army Life. By Captain Charles King, U.S.A. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 25.

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=Transcriber's Notes:= original hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in the original Page 7, "doctor's workshop" changed to "doctor's workshop." Page 29, "he in vented concerning" changed to "he invented concerning" Page 33, "through why it was" changed to "though why it was" Page 110, "Nine times in-ten" changed to "Nine times in ten" Page 156, "mainland" changed to "main-land" [Ed. for consistency] Page 169, "to get baffalo meat" changed to "to get buffalo meat" Page 238, "that we be come" changed to "that we become" Page 282, "two-and-a half" changed to "two-and-a-half"